NBC delivers three-screen Olympics
Oct 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Brad Dick
Here’s how the network produced everything from HD to Web and mobile programming using IT and IP technologies.
Do it smaller, cheaper, lighter, faster, and by the way, in HD. That was David Mazza's assignment for this year's Summer Olympics in Beijing. As senior vice president, engineering-Olympics, for the NBC network, he and his staff were given a challenge for this year's games.
Do more — but quicker
Even with live sports, automation played an important role in keeping each person and the broadcast center on task. This control desk provided a supervisory view of upcoming and current events.
Costs are a concern for every broadcaster, and originating the Olympics is no different. The invisible tribute to Mazza's team was the network's ability to produce more content, in HD plus 2200 hours of streaming programs, all accomplished by a production staff primarily remaining in the United States. This feat is largely due to the team's skill in pushing technology to new capabilities.
Key to his success was NBC's work-at-home initiative. The objective was to continue producing high-quality programming for increasing numbers of channels, but without the accompanying increased costs. Meeting this goal involved achieving several objectives: producing more HD and streaming content, expanding the work-at-home initiative, and doing so with a file-based workflow.
Step one required reconfiguring NBC's highly successful containerized core broadcast center. Beginning in 1999, the key components of the network's BOC were mounted in what the network calls RIBs, or racks in a box. Each RIB consists of two rows of 10 racks, mounted back-to-back with a work space between them. This allows engineers to mount and wire the equipment in the racks while still in the United States. After the wiring is completed, each RIB is moved into a shipping container and transported to the Olympic broadcast site. Once on-site, the RIBs are interconnected with other venues and equipment via ceiling cabling. The result greatly shortens build-out time.
Although some of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games were broadcast in HD, this year's goal was to provide U.S. audiences with a full complement of HD images in addition to several thousands of hours of streaming content. For the Torino broadcasts, the network built an overlay of HD on top of an existing SD infrastructure. Given the amount of HD content needed, Mazza needed to retool the BOC's central infrastructure.
Despite the requirement for HD, Mazza actually reduced the number of RIBs needed.
NBC’s highly successful Olympic coverage was supported by Omneon’s MediaGrid servers in both Beijing and New York. The servers were connected to an Omneon ProCast CDN transport system, which allowed the network to create a U.S.- based, fully interactive, edit-by-proxy content creation system — a 6000mi file-based workflow.
“We shaved off five RIBs. We had 13 RIBs in Torino, and now we only have eight,” he said. “Considering that we went from SD to HD, it is amazing that we were able to shave off that many RIBs.”
Part of this success stems from newer routing technology.
“The original SD router that we built in 1999 took up 10 racks, a whole half of a RIB,” he said. “That router was about 320 × 320 and only switched SD. Now we have an 800 × 800 HD router all contained in one rack. The new router reduced the required rack space while simultaneously almost tripling the number of crosspoints, all at six times the data rate.” Another important change was to move the RIBs closer to each other because NBC was pushing the limit of HD over cable.
“We needed to get the RIBs close enough so that we could make the connections on copper,” Mazza said. “Our goal was to reduce the setup time by 25 percent, which meant finishing in six weeks. We made it.”
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